I’ve been watching in anticipation as Ryan Carson has been getting DropSend ready to go live. It’s been a long and interesting road for Ryan, not without it’s challenges, so to finally be able to talk about it is exciting for me, and I’m sure super exciting for him and Gill. And I can honestly say that I think he’s hit the nail on the head. Squarely.

What is it?
DropSend allows you to store and send files, easily, and online. It’s that simple, and I think it does it well.
From the horses mouth:

Send photos, movies or music to family and friends

Back-up important files

Get those large illustration files to clients

Transfer files from home to work, or vice versa

I think there are many applications for many industries, and I’m sure that there are many intrepid individuals that are going to like this – think large databases, architectural files, pdf’s and of course CD images. With up to 25GB of space for $19 a month, with unlimited sends, there’s plenty to play with.

At the moment I’m sending a large 58.8MB file to a developer friend in South Africa – something I’d never be able to do via email, and certainly not without my own FTP server (which is how I would normally do it) – using the desktop application DropSend offers for Windows. It worked first time logging me in, and at 22MB so far, I think it’s safe to say that it’ll all be fine.

The web app itself is clean and simple to get around, with little or no useability issues that I can see. I really think my Dad would be able to use it, but am not sure about my Mom (sorry Mom!). I’m certain any of my more tech savvy friends will find it a snap too. All the standard stuff is there to manage your account, and if you need to upgrade, then it’s pretty easy to do that too. There’s also a Gifts section, where you can download some pretty neat stuff direct from DropSend – nice touch there, and knowing Ryan I think it will always be chock full of stuff that is cool now. The desktop app for me is the killer ‘tho, ‘cos it means that I don’t have to visit the site to upload if I don’t want to, but can access my files from anywhere when I need to. It’s super easy to use, and shows you a status bar as things progress.

Well, I’ve just been told the 58.8MB file has been uploaded successfully, I can see it’s on DropSend server, and I need to go to bed ;-) Thanks for the awesome app Ryan!

If you need to store / send / share large files with anyone, and they have web access and an email address, then I suggest giving it a try – It’s free to do so, and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed!

Update: I’ve just sent another mate in London the same file using the web app…

6 comments

I don’t get the excitement. This kind of thing has been available since the late eighties from the likes of 4-sight and WamNet. Nowadays I’d use WebDAV on an apache server where you get drag & drop up and download from all major OSs out of the box with no desktop apps required, and SSL and authentication come for free. Hell, you can even use subversion to track the changes to uploaded files!

I completely get what you’re saying, but then I’d also probably be correct in saying that you’re a geek, if not a little bit? Sounds like you’ve got good technical knowledge, and that you’re not afraid to dive right in and set things up yourself. That said, I don’t think DropSend is aimed specifically at you, but rather those folk who either don’t have the tech knowledge, or the time, to set something like that up and then run with it…

So does that mean you’re a Subversion / WebDAV guy? Mmm… erm, I’m looking for someone like that ;-)

It’s either nerds, who ARE in the market for FTPing big files, but are more than capable of knocking this stuff together in an afternoon – or it’s for non-nerds.

But the thing about non-nerds is that they don’t spend a lot of time zipping massive files around the globe.

So are they attacking the market that doesn’t need it, or the market that won’t use it?

Good luck to them, but I don’t see that it’s anything other than a very niche app. As soon as the market’s worth having, google and yahoo will add it as a feature on their email clients. Until it is, it’s ain’t worth having.